1. Open Access Resources
in Law
Dr. Joseph I Thomas

2. Introduction
• Law is that system of rules which are created and enforced through social or
governmental institutions to regulate behavior.
• Laws are basically about the principles and regulations established in a
community or state, by some authority, and applicable to the people living in
it.
• State enforced laws, can be made by a collective legislature. Laws can be
Civil, Criminal, Common, Statutory, Corporate, Environmental, Media ,
Family, Property, International etc

3. India Code
• India Code (https://www.indiacode.nic.in/) is a database of all Central
enactments which are in force and their subordinate legislations made from
time to time.
• With the help of this system, retrieving of any Central Act and its relevant
subordinate legislations of one’s interest in an up-to-date form has been
simplified and made extremely user-friendly and accessible at push of few
buttons.

4. Hon. Supreme Court of India
• The website of the Hon. Supreme Court of India (https://main.sci.gov.in/)
provides latest judgements, case statuses, cause lists, collegium resolutions,
case categories etc.
• It also allows you to calculate the court fees on specifying case type, category
and Sub Category

5. • Ministry of Law and Justice is the oldest limb of the Government of India
dating back to 1833 when the Charter Act 1833 enacted by the British
Parliament.
• Ministry of Law And Justice comprises of the Legislative Department and
the Department of Legal Affairs.
• The department provides alphabetical and chronological lists of central acts.
Its Official language wing has published in Hindi, the Standard forms of
Legal Documents in 8 volumes (Government of India, 2018) .

6. • On 7th August 2013, Hon'ble the Chief Justice of India launched the
e-Courts National portal ecourts.gov.in of the eCourts Project.
• More than 2852 Districts and Taluka Court Complexes have secured their
presence on the NJDG portal ecourts.gov.in and are providing Case Status,
Cause lists online with many of them also uploading orders/judgments
(eCourts Services, 2016) .

7. • This open access resource (https://indiankanoon.org/) is a case law database
and search engine (Indian Kanoon, 2023) .
• It claims that process of collecting judgments across Supreme Court and all
high courts that happens daily is completely automated and now has roughly
4000 judgments are added daily.
• Also has a paid virtual assist option, which will help with annotating cases
and creating ready documents with existing research (Tracxn Technologies
Limited, 2023) .

8. • PRS Legislative Research (https://prsindia.org/) is a non-partisan
independent research institute that provides research support on legislative,
public policy and budgets to Members of Parliament and Members of
Legislative assemblies across India.
• It was established in September 2005 as an independent research institute
(PRS Legislative Research, 2023) .

9. Global Legal Information Network
• The Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) (https://glinf.org/) is a
network of Member States and designated International Organizations
committed to enhancing the legislative processes of individual countries, and
to making their laws and legal decisions accessible to their citizens,
legislators, government and private sector officials and others who relate to
the country through international trade, and to participants in the global
community generally (GLIN Foundation, 2021) .

10. Legal Information Institute of India
• The Legal Information Institute of India(LII of India) (www.liiofindia.org) is
a comprehensive collection of Indian legal information.
• The contents include legislation, case law, treaties, law reform reports, cases
concerning India in International Courts and Tribunals and cases concerning
India from the pre -1873 English Reports (LIIofIndia, 2023) .

11. Data Portal of India
• The Data Portal of India (https://data.gov.in/) facilitated the access to
Government owned shareable data and information in both human readable
and machine readable forms in a proactive and periodically updatable
manner, within the framework of various related policies, Acts and Rules of
Government of India, thereby promoting wider accessibility and application
of government owned data and unlocking the potential of data for national
development (Government of India, 2022) .

12. High Court of Australia
• The High Court of Australia (High Court) (https://www.hcourt.gov.au/) is
the highest court in the Australian judicial system.
• It was established in 1901 by section 71 of the Constitution.

13. Supreme Court of Canada
• The Supreme Court of Canada (https://www.scc-csc.ca/) is Canada’s final
court of appeal.
• It serves Canadians by deciding legal issues of public importance, thereby
contributing to the development of all branches of law applicable within
Canada.

14. Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
• The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) (https://www.jcpc.uk/)
is the court of final appeal for the UK overseas territories and Crown
dependencies.

15. Commonwealth Legal Information Institute
• Commonwealth Legal Information Institute (http://www.commonlii.org/) is
a full text, searchable legislation, case law and secondary legal materials
databases

16. Conclusion
• In this paper the author has mentioned about 20 open access resources in
law. Both Indian as well as foreign sources of legal information has been
mentioned in this paper.